West Coast hip-hop trio Clipping is headed to Milwaukee as part of the tour for its latest record, "CLPPNG," out now on Sub Pop. The three -- Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson -- will open for Busdriver on Thursday, Oct. 23 at the Cactus Club.
Nothing better explains Clipping’s sound than, well, Clipping sound, which you can hear here...
In advance of the Milwaukee gig, we caught up with Snipes and Hutson, to ask about the new record and the whole idea of genres and the limitations they might impose from outside.
OnMilwaukee.com: Your new record sounds like proof that we live in a post-genre world. Are genres useful to you in any way as someone who makes music and as someone who enjoys music?
Jonathan Snipes: Genres are essentially words invented so people can talk to each other about music without actually addressing the actual music itself. I get it, it's hard to talk about music and even if you have a strong musical education, there's a lot of subjectivity in the vocabulary.
William Hutson: Genres are marketing categories, ways to sell music. "If you like this, then buy this also." And I certainly don't see that going away. I see that getting way more specific, way more tailored to individuals. Journalists' rush to call us "noise-rap" or "avant-hip-hop" feels like ever-increasing sub-divisions -- like Netflix: "Gritty family dramas with a strong female lead" or whatever.
As odd as people think we sound, we just think we're making rap music. We're not dumb -- we know we're often noisy, or overtly opaque, but many rappers have been those things in the past. Plus, hip-hop was always an amalgam of many genres -- that's how sampling works. We just sometimes draw from genres that a lot of listeners aren't used to.
OMC: A Sub Pop press release says, "CLPPNG is an album that demonstrates the variety of sounds available when the ‘rules’ of a genre are willfully questioned." It sounds like you took an approach that viewed convention as an explicit challenge.
JS: Structurally we aren't doing anything unusual for rap music. The sounds in our beats are the sounds Bill and I like and know how to make, just like everyone else making beats.
WH: I think maybe we stretch some boundaries, but we don't break any "rules" -- if such things even exist. We try to do some things that people haven't heard over and over again -- Diggs never says "I," some beats aren't in 4/4, etc. -- not because we're tearing anything down. We just want to give listeners a unique experience within the limits of what rap can do.
OMC: Is there a limit? Even at his most out there, Coltrane was still playing a saxophone.
WH: And if you'd asked him in 1967, I bet he'd say he was still playing jazz. As far as we're concerned, the "rules" of rap music are that there's rapping on a song. I'm not going to address what is or isn't rapping, but I don't think anyone could call what Diggs does anything but rap, right?
OMC: Right. How's the Busdriver tour been going?
JS: We've all been big fans of Busdriver for years. This is incredibly fun, and a real honor.
OMC: Been to Milwaukee before?
WH: Never. I expect it to be just like Laverne & Shirley.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
